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Drinu Munitions
Drinu munitions are a class of artillery projectiles for land, sea, and space-based weapons systems. Put simply, drinu munitions are designed to deliver a nuclear discharge to the depths of a target creature, machine, or structure. They have remained a common form of projectile-weapon since their invention in the early First Era. Invention The first drinu, the name a portmanteau of "drill" and "nuke", was invented in 85 F.E. by Sir Marcus Bellweather, a Earthican engineer then working for BAE Systems (a proginitor of the Epsilon Corporation). Bellweather, along with his colleagues, had been tasked with developing new forms of space-based weaponry for use by the nasent Solar Armada. The order set three requirements: *Munitions must be capable of serving both space-to-space and space-to-surface purposes. *Munitions must be physically scalable, so as to be fit for targets with size ranging from a small boat to large structures. *Munitions must be temporally scalable, so as to be fit for as-of-yet undiscovered environments and unforseeable advances in defense and deterrence Sir Bellweather's solution to these three requirements was remarkably simple and elegant: put a nuke in it. Thus, he developed a series of nuclear warheads tipped with a hard shell that would, on impact, crack open to reveal and initiate the operation of a drill, boring the shell into its target. In order to demonstrate the weapon, BAE Systems, without Sir Bellweather's knowledge, scaled the weapon up to unpredicted size and tested it before Solar Armada officers by destroying Metis, the innermost moon of Jupiter. The Armada immediately offered a contract for the entire series. Unfortunately, Sir Bellweather, shocked by the demonstration, comitted suicide in 88 F.E. He was discovered in his London flat with the words "DRILLS AND NUKES" painted repeatedly over the walls in red paint. Nine months later a drinu would be used to seismically destroy the rebellious Martian city of Olympia. Applications The drinu has remained a mainstay of arms manufacturing and military equpiment in spite of the popularization of energy weapons, cyberwarfare, and Voodoo. Most military vessels contain a stockpile of varied drinu shells, for both space-to-space combat and space-to-surface bombardment, though they are traditionally reserved for larger or particularly difficult targets. Famously, the Bejeweled Hermitage was destroyed by the Sir'Du flagship Kingsfury through a combination of heavy energy fire and a drinu shell. A later variation of the drinu, the warp drinu, or "warnu" for short, replaces the drill warhead in whole or part with a conventional faster-than-light engine mounted to a nuclear payload. In this way, the need to forcibly defeat physical defenses is bypassed entirely, and a nuclear payload can be delivered to its destination with unparalleled speed. However, due to the size of CFTL engines, this method is restricted only to very large nuclear payloads. Further, if forces defending a target discover the unfolding deployment of a warnu prior to its detonation, its delivery can be prevented through the defensive manipulation of spacetime. Some scholars have hypothesized that a supermassive warnu deployment was the cause of the Biblioclasm at New Alexandria, given the absence of any records to indicate the presence of planet-class energy weapons in the Zarakkanian fleet present at its destruction. Some surface-based weapons systems also utilize smaller drinu shells or their conventional explosive variant, "dribo" shells.